Recently I have heard the response to using technology as “ I can’t see my child having more screen time”, or ‘ My child needs the teacher, a person, to learn.
I think about learning to play the violin, where, as in learning any musical instrument, I practiced on my own. I sat and learned the notes and applied them to a movement. I walked the measure, I moved myself within this. No pictures, no adults standing over me micro managing me, but one day a week for a few minutes. This moves in exact opposition to what parents believe should be happening when their child learns. This means that it is an idea that an adult as a teacher must be present, micromanaging a child’s thinking movement. Why do we teach math and academics in a room, where an adult as speaking knowledge and information, where the child is not directing in any measure, they are simply taking something in? The idea that a child needs an adult to be present to impart information continuously and ONLY, is against real learning. It actually limits learning, as the child is not self discovering as self measuring and reflecting and applying in any real way. The outcome of such would lead to an inability to attend to reality, to practical application in real time.
Hence, we have the increase in varying degrees of attention dis-orders.
A child does not need a teacher micro-managing them for six hours a day, they actually need the time to self discover and investigate all by themselves. As with learning to play an instrument, small sessions of reflection by a teacher is cool, yet longer periods of self application is necessary for the child to work through things themselves. The brunt of the learning is done by the child. This is how one learns to play an instrument.
Perhaps, this belief is more emotional, that a parent wants another person to be actively teaching their child for it to have meaning. It is the parent, within the present structures, feeling quilt for not being enough to teach the child or having given away a freedom to guide a child- a gift- to another. A parent who is a product of the same system, and believing that it was themselves that was not good enough to learn what was given, when it was the format that limited. This is not understood by parents.
Within music, we have children as young as two learning musical instruments, and learning to read notes, where the learning is done by the child, with much shorter moments of one-on-one/direct instruction teaching taking place, in measure, when compared to what public schooling is doing by design.
If a child can learn to read notes and play an instrument by the time they are seven, then this reveals the capacity and the means of teaching children, where the child is given small moments of direction in comparison to larger amount of time working on things themselves, which could be called opportunity, real opportunity. This is probably why schools in Finland, allow 75 minutes of recess, because they realize that child needs time to work on things themselves. If we limit self discovery, we actually limit the ability to have a well developed attention.
And if we look at Common Core, we see information being presented in endless series of loops, of busy work. This would further divide the attention of the child, by creating strings of information to associate through, leading to a sluggish processing ability, like a really unorganized memory on a computer composed of what appears to be abundance, yet is not. This in tandem with excessive wealth accumulation, means that the victors are determining the form of information in our children in their own self interest. And the rest of us are accepting this!
The consequence of this is a loss of spatial ability, leading to a loss of purpose, as one can no longer see reality with such a busy mindfulness that takes time to realize is not who one really is!
If we look at how and when children can learn to play instruments, we can see that our children can learn to process language at a much earlier age than any of us, the products of generations of this, can fathom. This is that which is ‘ educed’ as drawn out, that which can move into any form if given the opportunity, that which some could call, or say, is able to move through the eye of the needle, being given time to learn to self direct, and begin to see patterns and be present in reality, be grounded here, having the ability to pay attention to here in ways that build a very sound character, someone who can be creative, fearing not to critique and examine, within and without.
We can change our schools to places where children really learn, and the behaviors of lack , of attention deficits are refocused, or reconstructed back into being self directive beings that remain as gentle as they/we were as children full of awe for life and a natural desire to want to learn to crawl and to walk and to talk. Prevention being the best cure, would be to have children learn the notes as words, at a much younger age, and to realize that our children do not need an adult there within the present number of hours with one teacher constantly micro managing, as social engineering what information that child should only be and realize. This really is a crime against the life in the child.
We can transform out present educational systems to allow each child to self discover. And we can use technology to allow that needed tome to form a well structured memory, as the ' iceberg' within to create a mindfulness that is something to be proud of, where what we hear is clear, pure and working with us instead of against us. Here, we can transform our schools, into places where children are learning to use the instrument of themselves to ' sound' something that they can trust, because the information is clear, trustworthy and self understood. Techno Tutor, the means to a sound mind, and a huge cost benefit for our schools. The means to the end, to transform the attention deficits within that are growing, into a community of children that trust the within to direct them in effective ways without.
We decide.
Music is fluid math, it is notes, symbols on a graph, the same as words. We have the capacity to process language, which is measure, as well as that child that started at two to read music at two and developed proficiency at seven. Anything less is causing a lack of expression in the child, leading to frustration and attention deficits, as the chaos of an unsound mind, is static, and slows down the natural expression that is gentle and full of awe in a child. We all know this, as that open and transparent smile every child has and seems to lose over time. We can, with Techno Tutor build a sound mind. Cost effective and fun, as learning should be.
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